fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2101 ]

[ SECRET POST #2101 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2101 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 040 secrets from Secret Submission Post #300.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 2 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 2 - take it to comments ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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How is Brokeback terrible?

I didn't think it was amazing or anything, but I didn't think it was bad. I thought it was good, but of a genre I don't generally prefer.

What am I missing here?

(Also, I'm really not seeing how it's like yaoi. At all.)

The pacing was way too slow, for one thing. The acting varied between wooden and Narm (though I largely blame Ang Lee; this is the same guy who directed The Hulk). And the relationship was (at least to me) wildly dysfunctional and toxic on both sides, yet presented as though it was supposed to be considered healthy and perfect. Like the gay version of Twilight/i> without the vampires.

Huh. That's interesting. I didn't think it was portrayed as healthy at ALL. I thought it was about how living in a repressive environment poisons even love when you find it. I certainly didn't think it seemed like Twilight.

That may be why I didn't hate it, though.

Maybe. Just about everything in the movie seemed to scream to me "THESE TWO SHOULD BE TOGETHER THEY'RE MADE FOR EACH OTHER BUT THEY CAN'T BECAUSE OPPRESSION THAT'S SO SAD." When I'm sitting there thinking "no, they shouldn't be together because Ennis is a manipulative douchecanoe and Jack is an extreme doormat."

I didn't feel that way at all. In fact, I expected that. Instead I got characters who didn't read to me so much as externally oppressed (though they were that too) as internally oppressed. Ennis was a dysfunctional, maybe even a horrible, person, because he couldn't own up to his emotions.

I guess maybe it IS like yaoi, then -- it's what the exaggerated closed off "seme" would actually be if he really existed -- a stunted person whose distance harms everyone around him.

I didn't think it was fluttery romance. I was surprised that it wasn't. I'd say pleasantly surprised, but that kind of tearjerking isn't my bag. Still, it made the whole thing higher quality, I think. Impressedly surprised? That, I guess.

Though I didn't think it was great or revolutionary or amazing or anything. I did think it was impressive for its time in a way. It didn't tell a "gay story" and make the characters what you might expect, stereotypically. It presented you with an older man, a man whose struggles were as much internal as external. It didn't beat you over the head with homophobes' evil until the very end. It just made the whole thing... sad and insidious.

That felt very real to me, so I thought it was good. Again, not great. But good. And impressive in its way.

I guess maybe it IS like yaoi, then -- it's what the exaggerated closed off "seme" would actually be if he really existed -- a stunted person whose distance harms everyone around him.

Yep, that's exactly why it reminds me of yaoi. It used a lot of yaoi tropes, but just dressed them in cowboy costumes for a Western audience. Jack, if he really existed, would've been a classic "uke", too. And like I said upthread, there's no point paying $9 to see it on the big screen when I can read it online for free.

I couldn't even find it impressive because it's literally the same Bury Your Gays trope I've seen in all romantic dramas involving a same-sex relationship in this country, as few as there are. They're a gay couple, ergo they will not be allowed to be happy. The implication being that gay romance is not normal and therefore doomed to end you and everything you love. I'm tired of being told that because of the gender I prefer in bed, I'm doomed to a very short, miserable life.

Ironically, if it had been written and presented as a fluttery, cute relationship? That would've been impressive because it never fucking happens.

The implication being that gay romance is not normal and therefore doomed to end you and everything you love.

Yeah, I can see that.

Personally, I took it more as a condemnation of the culture (or better said the... I don't want to say subcultures. Regional cultures? Mini-cultures?) that can doom gay people than of the gay people themselves.

I think that's probably why that didn't bother me.

I don't think it would've jumped out at me if it wasn't such a pervasive pattern. Even when the script tries to pass it off as the result of societal oppression/ostracization, it still ends up coming off as "this is what happens to you when you're gay, WHY THE HELL DO YOU WANT TO BE GAY?"

Because you don't get the same pattern in straight couples who are forbidden by a difference in race/class/religion/whathaveyou. They get to overcome those hurdles and be happy and teach everyone around them how stupid their hatred is.

The gays? Get to wind up crazy, dead, or both. And prove the haters' point.

But that was in the original story which was set in the 1960's and published in 1997. So it's more "why did you pick this horrible story to portray a gay relationship?" than just another story in a pervasive pattern.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2012-10-04 02:55 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2012-10-04 10:50 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2012-10-04 15:23 (UTC) - Expand

Hmm, I didn't think it was bad per se, and I liked it more on second viewing, but here's some criticism I heard.

- It was actually just a very generic Hollywood movie, that was only "revolutionary" because it was about two men. Imagine the same story with a man and a woman - it would just be a fairly uninteresting romantic drama.

- Ennis is not so much a sympathetic character. Sure, he's partly a victim of circumstance - but still, he's a jerk to both his wife and Jack. Basically he promises them both something he can't give them, and leads them on for years.
And he's the one that the movie wants us to sympathize with at the end.

- Form over content: I.e. beautiful shots, that cover up lack of story.

- Too drawn out

- The one actual gay sex scene in that movie is pretty terrible - which is a shame, because, ya know, it's kind of essential to the movie.

etc, etc

How sympathetic was Ennis supposed to be, though? I thought part of the point was that he was a horrible person because he was so emotionally stunted he couldn't be anything else -- and personally I'd say part of that's internalized homophobia and part of it's norms of masculinity and part of it's just who the character was.

I had complex reactions to him -- sometimes compassion, sometimes disgust -- and I thought that was intended.

It sounds like from what others are saying that maybe I made the character complex in my mind because my imagination is a better writer than whoever penned the script, though.

I hope not, though it does kind of give me superpowers. *glowy halo*

Edited 2012-10-03 23:49 (UTC)

It sounds like from what others are saying that maybe I made the character complex in my mind because my imagination is a better writer than whoever penned the script, though.

That's probably it, to be honest. It's even worse reading the original story. Anne Proulx gives SMeyer a run for her money.

I liked the story, too. Really loved how sparse it was.

I'm now feeling like I'm either a genius or crazy.

No you're just reading the movie correctly and more intelligent than the people with whom you're talking about it here. Anyone who compares Annie Proulux with Smeyer is a moron.

Thank you. I was feeling like I was in Bizarro World. "Doesn't deserve the Pulitzer" is one thing. Comparisons to SMeyer? That just seems like anon has an enormous axe to grind.

I agree with everything you've said.

I thought the story was pretty impressive, personally. Generally I find stuff published in The New Yorker to be unbearably pretentious tripe. Brokeback seemed like an attempt to capture a little bit of the soul of a region and community and its outsiders, and I liked that about it.

I could see how the dialect could be annoying, but that's a stylistic choice, not a sign of a hack. And maybe I never paid enough attention to Twilight but I didn't get the feeling SMeyer was trying to capture the soul of a region the way Proulx was, so they really don't seem comparable at all even if Proulx is a bad writer. (Which maybe she is; I liked Brokeback but it may be unusually good. Or her other stories may be so stylistically indistinguishable from it that once you've read one, you've read them all.)

Protip: You might be taken more seriously if you bothered to spell her first name right.

Oh, it wasn't that bad. Or maybe I'm just taking this in the context of it being one of the first GLBT stories I read.

Probably. I read Proulx's story as well as the first 15 pages of Twilight and IMO, it really was that bad.

To me the problem is: it seems that the movie doesn't go far enough if they wanted to go with the "repressed douche-bag Ennis" story. Which, to be fair, is how I felt about most of of the movie. They brushed over certain subjects, alluding at them, but never quite daring to fully push them through.

Though maybe I'm just a not-so-subtle person in generaland my opinion is not scared, of course. My bf loved the movie, interestingly enough.

My personally issue with Ennis is that I dislike cowards and liars, and sadly he was both.

He was both. And quite unlikeable too.

You are right about Ennis, fwiw. The one's complaining that he's dysfunctional are giving the film a very cliche, shallow reading. Too much yaoi has warped their brains, I reckon.

Thank you! <3 I kept thinking "you can't win with people." If it's a yaoi-type portrayal of a strong, silent top for whom things work out exaggeratedly well in the end, it's unrealistic and cliched and no one could live like that. If it's a realistic portrayal of a very aloof and closed-off person who has that kind of personality for real and actually shows how that can be harmful, well, he's "still a seme" so people still hate him.

Iiiiii dunno. I mean, yeah, I have some problems with yaoi semes too. But I would think Ennis would make these people happy -- because they could point to the depiction of him and go LOOK, SEE, IT MAKES FOR A DYSFUNCTIONAL JERKFACE.

But no.

You know, when damn near everyone else is reading the same thing that's different from you, it may just be your version that's seriously warped. Just sayin'.

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